Quotes: Eagles Locker Room

BARKLEY: “I think I can’t give a fair assessment right now, because I think it would be a bit biased. I am feeling a little negative, given the situation. I will look at the tape and review it, but you can always improve. It sounds cliché, but you have to start somewhere. I thought I was ready to go in. I thought I was prepared to play. I was trying to do everything I could, maybe too much. I tried to extend a few plays and come from behind. I was trying to get the ball in the end zone. But, it stinks to lose.”

Is it hard going in after not getting 1st team reps this week in practice:

BARKLEY: “I would say the only difficult thing about that is just getting the timing down with those guys. You get routes vs. air with those receivers during warm up drills. But, to go live speed, 100%, seeing their breaks, seeing them drop their hips, their little tendencies that they have, I don’t totally know them yet. So, there is a lot to learn. I have a lot of growth, I think in front of me, which I am excited for. But, I felt comfortable with the game plan and knowing the plays, that was not the issue.”

On whether he thinks this offense is better suited for a quarterback who is also a running threat:

BARKLEY: “I wouldn’t say it’s tailored to any specific type of quarterback. I think that if you are efficient in everything, both styles of quarterback can run this offense and put points on the board.”

McCOY:“I don’t think, as offensive weapons, we gave him much of a chance. There are plays that we should have made, there are plays that I should have made, to help him out. If you look down the line, I bet guys would say the same things about themselves. We just didn’t give him a shot. I think that Nick is a heck of a player. He’s a good leader. We just let him down.”

On how frustrating it is to not take advantage of this game and finish today with a lead in the NFC East:

McCOY: “Yeah, there was so much to gain from this game. We just didn’t get it done today.”

On whether he feels for the fans, who have not seen the team win at home in a long time:

McCOY: “First, I feel for this team and organization. We put so much hard work in every week. But the fans, absolutely. They paid their hard earned money to watch this team perform and do well. We haven’t done well at home at all, starting last season and continuing to this year. We have to fix that.”

JACKSON: “I don’t know. We just really couldn’t get anything going today. It was a tough game on our side. Our defense did a good job of keeping us in the game by stopping Dallas. On the offensive side, we weren’t able to get it going today.”

On how Dallas was covering him today:

JACKSON: “The same thing everyone else has been doing. There was some man coverage. We are seeing the same stuff. I don’t have an answer for you. We have to see the film and see what we are doing wrong.”

On whether Dallas played a Cover-2 against them today:

JACKSON: “They did a little Cover-2. It wasn’t a lot. We felt like we could go out there and get some looks, but it just didn’t fall our way today.”

On what happened to his ankle that caused him to miss a play:

JACKSON: “I just got rolled up. One of their linemen stepped on it.”

On whether he thinks the it was what Dallas did or their own play that led to their performance today:

JACKSON: “Dallas did a good job. They came out and played a good game. But for us, we never got things going. It was frustrating. We have to figure out what it is and just fix it. We can’t really hang our heads. We still have a lot of season left. We will figure it out and move forward.”

On how he thought QB Matt Barkley played today:

JACKSON: “He is a good player. As far as giving us an opportunity to make plays, I thought he did that. But, he was able to come in, distribute the ball and make a few plays for us.”

AVANT: “We couldn’t complete a ball today and we couldn’t run it effectively. We had a couple of penalties, but that was not big. We just couldn’t connect when we had opportunities. It was just bad.”

On how disappointing it was considering that first place in the division was on the line:

AVANT:“Well, no matter if it’s for first place or not, to come out and play the way we did is disappointing. You don’t want to go out all week, practice hard, watching extra film and then come out and play like this. It looked like we didn’t prepare right, which was not the case. It was certainly sad for us to come out and play like that at home.”

On how tough of a situation was it for QB Matt Barkley to be thrown into:

AVANT: “It is certainly rough. I believe that he prepares well for certain things, and to come in and try to win the game when he really didn’t have the amount of reps that you need is hard. So, he battled and tried to do his best. We just put ourselves behind the 8-ball. Whenever you put yourself into a situation where you have to pass all the time, odds are against you. We just had to protect the ball better than we did today and just make some plays. We just didn’t make any plays.”

On how much of this performance can be put on the skilled position players:

AVANT: “A lot of it. But, we have to watch the film. From the outside in, it’s really easy to say that he has to do this or that, but we will see tomorrow when we watch the film. We will see how we can correct this for the future and hopefully this won’t happen again. But we didn’t play well.”

On what happened on the play in the end zone that was reviewed and ruled an incomplete pass:

AVANT: “I beat my guy. I saw the ball was thrown low, so I did my best to run to it and get to it. I tried to pop it up to myself, because I saw it was going to hit the ground. So, I was trying to get my hands underneath and bring it up to myself in order to have a chance to catch it. It kind of got to the ground. I got my back hand under it, but the nose hit the ground. Maybe if it had gotten the front of the ball, I could have scooped it up.”

On whether he was surprised with this game given how productive the offense has been:

AVANT: “Yeah, to be so flat and inconsistent the whole day was surprising. Usually, inconsistency happens for a half or a quarter, but for this to happen the whole game was bizarre and frustrating for us. It is about going out and executing the whole game. We have to make the best of the opportunities we have, and we didn’t do that today. Hopefully we will this upcoming week.”

ERTZ: “I do not think we really look at it like that. It is only one game in the season, and luckily we are going to play [the Cowboys] again the last game of the season. It’s only week seven and we are 3-4 and we have a chance to get back to .500 after next week. It is only one game, and I think that is what we have to take out of it.”

On struggling at home:

ERTZ: “I don’t really know what is going on at home. I wasn’t here last year. This year’s games, we were close against the Chargers. The [Kansas City] Chiefs and this game we really just did not play up to our standard. It’s tough we want to put on a good show for the fans and unfortunately we haven’t had that.”

On the positives from today’s game:

ERTZ: “We dealt with a lot of adversity in the game. I think we are going to learn from all of that. This whole week we have to look in the mirror and evaluate this game. Fortunately we do have the Giants next week and that is always a big one.”

KELCE: “They had similar looks to what they had done leading up to today. I thought they did more man-to-man coverage than they had previously. They didn’t do a lot of 2-Tampa, but I kind of expected that coming in. That is what a lot of teams have done against us, with the exception of Tampa Bay who stayed zone for the most part. But, for most of the season we have seen a lot of man-to-man.”

On how many of the run plays were zone reads:

KELCE: “I would not be able to tell you that. I don’t think we changed the percentage up at all.”

On whether he thinks the Cowboys had the offense scouted pretty well:

KELCE: “I felt like the Giants and Dallas have come in with pretty good game plans against us. It’s hard to tell until you watch film, but we just have to do a better job adjusting. That’s what it comes down to. You can do as much film study as you want and think you know the opponent. They didn’t really change up what they were doing, you just have to adjust in the game. It’s always a little different than what you prepared for. If there was two games, that I thought, running wise, that we really struggled to adjust to what the defense was doing, it would be this game and the Giants game.”

On how hard it is to succeed offensively if the running game is not working:

KELCE: “It’s tough. We pride ourselves in being a good running team. That was embarrassing.”

On whether they put an extra guy in the box to stop the run:

KELCE: “Their safety had a few tackles where he came down late and was not accounted for. But, for the most part, I thought we had numbers. They did a lot of slanting and angling, but they did that on tape. We knew that was coming. We will have to go back and watch film and see exactly what the reason was that we weren’t successful running the ball, but it was a poor game for us running the ball.”

RYANS: “I am proud of the effort and the way our defense played. It was probably the best defensive outing we have had all season, and it was against a good football team with a good offense. I am just disappointed we couldn’t hold them out of the endzone the couple of times they got in there today. I felt that we had a really good plan and [defensive coordinator Bill Davis] called a really good game. The guys played hard, and it is just unfortunate that it didn’t go our way today.”

On his interception in the 3rd quarter:

RYANS: “I think we were in man coverage and I was on my man, and I just looked up and saw the ball had been thrown, so I made a play on it.”

On defending Cowboys WR Dez Bryant:

RYANS: “He’s a strong physical player, good route runner and he’s a top player in this league. He is going to make plays.”

On the disappointing loss today:

RYANS: “It’s disappointing we couldn’t get this win today. It is definitely a big game for us, being in our division. It was one we were really looking to get. We felt we had a good chance to get it. We just have to get back to work and see how we can make it better in order to come out with wins.”

On feeding off the defensive performance going into next week:

RYANS: “You feed off it and continue to play better. Just like any other game, you go back and correct any mistakes that were made. You try to do better, and as a defense you try to keep them out of the endzone.”

On his interception and sack:

RYANS: “It is not about me. As a team, our defense, especially all the guys up front, really did a good job. The guys in the back end did a good job, holding it up, which allowed me to get the sack. It is not about me; it is about us collectively.”

On his interception being a momentum changer:

RYANS: “[The defense] was talking about getting some momentum and getting a turnover, and I was fortunate enough to come down with it. I was looking forward to it and giving us some momentum and flipping it to our side.”

On the state of the defense after not allowing more than 21 points the past 3 games:

RYANS: “From where we started out defensively we have gotten a lot better. That is something we have been talking about each week. We knew it would get better because guys are getting more comfortable with what we are doing on defense. Guys know what they can and can’t do, and you see how good we are getting. We still have some things to get better at. Our goal is to continue to get better each week. Even though this was a solid outing, we still have some things we have to work on.”

On winning his first two games at home as an Eagle, but dropping the last nine home games since:

RYANS: “It is tough, but we know are fans are still behind us. We are not getting it done at home right now and that is disappointing not to win games when you have the home-field advantage. We have to do a better job of winning the games at home.”

On the intensity level on the team:

RYANS: “Everything is the same. We just did not make plays today.”

On whether or not this was a missed opportunity today to move up in the NFC East:

RYANS: “We lost the game and of course it was a big opportunity for us moving forward, but it is not going to hurt our season at all. We are going to keep pushing forward and working to get better.”

On what makes him think they can compete with the top teams in the NFL:

RYANS: “We have to prove it. Me saying we can hang with whoever is not going to mean anything unless we go out and prove ourselves against the top teams in the NFL.”

BARWIN: “Oh yeah. You see it off of any big plays that anybody makes, and obviously DeMeco had a great day out there today.”

On the blitz scheme for today’s game:

BARWIN: “I think there were some called blitzes, and we did not get there on all of them. But we got pretty good pressure on most of them.”

On the defense’s effort today versus a high-scoring Cowboys offense:

BARWIN: “We did not play good enough to win, so first of all it wasn’t good enough. There were some positives to take away from it. We were able to get some pressure on [QB Tony Romo] and get him out of rhythm, which we want to do every week against the opposing quarterback.”